Once across the Yellowstone, the little party set out at a good pace, for they had a long, hard day's journey before them. They found the country as destitute of grass as it had been west of the Little Missouri, and the ground seemed to have been fairly burned to powdery dust by the sun. As they travelled over the desolate country, they often thought pityingly of the troops behind them, who would have to traverse it much more slowly than they were doing and would, therefore, feel its discomforts more keenly. But, at least, the army would be near the river, so there would be no more such suffering from thirst as had been experienced in the terrible march out of the Bad Lands. Not an Indian was seen during the day; and the party, dusty and weary, rode up to the bank of the Missouri after nightfall. It was too wide and dangerous a stream to cross in the darkness; so bivouac was made until morning, and then, in response to signals, several skiffs put off from Fort Union and came over. Some of the soldiers stripped and, putting their clothing and equipments in the boats, swam across the river on their horses, but Al and Wallace, as well as most of the men, rode over in the boats, holding the bridles of their horses and letting them swim behind.

On entering Fort Union, Al delivered his letter and then inquired for Captain Lamont.

"He is still down at the wreck of his steamer, about two miles below here," the commanding officer informed him. "But if you are going down with him, you have arrived just in the nick of time. The steamer Belle Peoria came down yesterday from Benton, and she is taking on the engines of the Island City now. You had better get right down there or they may leave without you."

Al and Wallace galloped off down river at once, accompanied by two cavalrymen of their late escort to bring back their horses. Leaving so hastily gave them time for only a glance at Fort Union, though they sincerely wished for an opportunity to examine it more closely, for it was an interesting, and in that wilderness land, even an imposing structure. Built in 1829 as the then most advanced trading post of the American Fur Company, it had become in later years the centre of the fur trade of a vast territory, extending from the Rocky Mountains to the British line. It was larger and more substantially built than any other trading fort in the American West, and those who had seen them declared that no post of the Hudson's Bay Company in the British Possessions compared with it. Its stockade was two hundred and forty by two hundred and twenty feet in size, built of massive timbers and flanked by two large stone bastions, well armed with cannon, while several of its numerous interior buildings were also of stone. George Catlin, the distinguished artist who travelled all over the New World in making up his great collection of paintings of the American Indians, had visited the fort in 1832; Maximilian, Prince of Neuwied, the distinguished Austrian naturalist, had been there in 1833; and in 1843 the equally famous American naturalist, John James Audubon, had made the post his headquarters for some time. But when Al and Wallace passed through it, the days of the old establishment were numbered; two years later it was to be dismantled, the new army post of Fort Buford, two miles below and nearly opposite the spot where the Island City had sunk, taking its place as a military establishment.

The boys had not ridden far across the bottom, which was partly timbered and partly open grass land, when they saw the wreck of the steamer, lying out beyond a shore bar, her smoke stacks and upper works protruding above the water. The Belle Peoria was moored beside her and men could be seen working on both vessels. Al breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that they were not too late. Riding on across the bar, the boys were soon at the water's edge and about one hundred feet from the steamers. In answer to their shouts a small boat immediately put off from the Belle Peoria and came over for them. It was with the regret of parting from an old friend that Al for the last time caressed the rough neck and soft nose of Cottontail, who had borne him so faithfully through many perils and privations. The little horse nuzzled Al's cheek affectionately, as if he realized that they were bidding each other good-bye; then, with a strong hand-clasp from each of the soldiers, the boys stepped into the yawl and were rowed to the Belle Peoria.

It did not take long to explain to Captain Lamont their object in coming, and he seemed heartily glad of their company.

"You didn't get here any too soon," said he. "We shall be off in an hour. When we get to Fort La Framboise I have no doubt the captain of the Belle will stop long enough for you to find out if your brother is there, Al, and if he is, we can all go on together to St. Louis."

The Belle Peoria was under way at the expected time. Though the water was quite low, her pilots were skilful and knew the river so thoroughly that for some time she met with no unusual delays. After their months of strenuous campaigning it was pleasant for the boys to lounge about on the steamer's decks with nothing to do except watch the interweaving ripples of the river's surface, the occasional bitterns and cranes which flopped up from the lonely sandbars and sailed slowly away as the boat approached, and the rise and fall of the endless succession of bluffs along the shores. In a few weeks the Northwestern Indian Expedition would be following the crests of the northward bluffs on its way to Fort Rice, where it would break up; the Second Brigade, with the exceptions of garrisons left at Fort Rice and Fort Berthold, returning to Minnesota; while the First Brigade would go on down to Fort Sully, Fort Randall, and Sioux City.

After the crushing defeats which had been administered to the Indians at Tahkahokuty and the Little Missouri, it did not seem that steamboats on the Missouri ought to be in much danger from them; but the people on the Belle Peoria—both the members of her own crew and those of the Island City—knew that undoubtedly many hostiles had scattered from the broken Sioux camps who might be encountered anywhere along the river, eager for a chance to waylay a steamboat and slaughter a few of her crew in revenge for their own recent losses in battle. So, in laying the steamer up for the night, the men always "sparred her off" from the bank by setting long poles between the gunwale and the shore, so that she could not be boarded; or, if a mid-channel sandbar was convenient, with water on both sides of it, she would be moored there. Such precautions served well enough for night, but in the daytime the boat had to take her chances in following the channel close in against one shore or the other.

On the third day out from the Yellowstone the boat passed Fort Berthold, a fur trading post and the agency of the Arickaree and Mandan Indians, about midway between Fort Union and Fort Rice. For some hours afterward she continued running at a good speed, and at length passed a little below a beautiful forest on the left shore, called the Painted Woods. At this point there was a large sandbar in the middle of the river, while on the bank opposite to the woods the bluffs came sheer up to the river, and the pilot naturally chose the branch of the stream along their base, as the main channel will usually follow along a bluff bank. But in this case he soon found he had made a mistake, for he ran the boat into a pocket and could go no farther. There remained nothing to do but send out the yawl to sound through the other branch and find out if there was enough water there to carry the boat.

It occurred to Al that it would be a pleasant diversion to accompany the yawl, so he volunteered to pull one of the oars, and was accepted. The mate of the Belle Peoria, who was in charge of the yawl, ran into the other chute and soon found the channel; whereupon he signalled across the bar to the steamer, and while she was backing out and coming around, the crew of the yawl rowed over to the lower end of the Painted Woods and landed. The men pulled the boat's bow a little way out on the bank and then strolled away a few yards into the woods, where it was cool and shady. One man only remained in the yawl, and he, like Al, was a volunteer. He was Jim, the Island City's deck hand who had quarrelled with Al on the up trip. In spite of several attempts to escape while near Fort Union, Jim had been unable to jump his round-trip contract with Captain Lamont, and was now reluctantly returning toward St. Louis and that Southern Confederacy which he supported so loudly in words and so feebly in deeds.

The men who had landed, namely, the mate and Al, four other oarsmen and the leadsman, had been in the woods but a minute or two when, without the least warning, a dozen musket shots rang out from the bushes around them, instantly followed by a chorus of terrifying Indian war whoops. Two of the oarsman fell dead at the first fire; the rest of the party turned and dashed for the boat. But several Indians had crept between them and the landing and a moment elapsed before the mate and Al, who had their revolvers, could drive them back far enough to reach the shore. When they did so, to their horror they discovered the yawl out in mid-stream and some little distance down, rapidly drifting toward the bar. Jim was not to be seen, for he was lying flat in the bottom of the boat to escape the Indian bullets, but he was evidently pulling the rudder ropes to guide the yawl as nearly as possible to the bar. The Belle Peoria had caught the alarm, and her decks were swarming with armed men; but she was just rounding the head of the bar and was still farther away than the yawl, so that her people dared not fire on the Indians for fear of hitting their own men on the bank.

"We'll have to swim for it, boys!" shouted the mate, and flinging off his coat he dived into the river like a duck and struck out for the bar, keeping beneath the surface except when he had to come up for a second to breathe.

Al and the other men followed his example. It was not more than fifty yards to the bar but every inch of the way was fraught with deadly peril. Whenever he came to the surface to breathe, as he had to several times, Al heard the bullets whistling about his head. Once he heard another oarsman, a few feet from him, give a gurgling cry and saw his hands thrust up and clutch the air as he sank, struck by one of the merciless bullets. Before the survivors reached the bar, the fire of those on the steamer had driven the Indians back into the Painted Woods, with probably a greater loss than they had inflicted upon the crew of the yawl, though of the latter, one had drowned and one been shot in the water, besides the two killed on shore at the first fire.

When the survivors were safely back on the Belle Peoria, the mate stepped up to Jim, who had landed in the yawl at the lower end of the bar, and shouted,

"You scoundrel, you ran away and left us to shift for ourselves, didn't you? I've a mind to throw you overboard."

"I didn't run away," snarled Jim. "The yawl slipped off the bank and I couldn't get it back."

Backing up against a stanchion he faced the angry mate and the crowd behind him like a desperate animal at bay and cast one swift, venomous glance at Al which caused the latter to feel a sudden suspicion.

"Did you think you'd get rid of me that way?" he demanded, confronting the deck hand. "Were you willing to see six other men murdered just to get even with me?"

Jim dared not look at him again.

"I didn't think anything," he muttered. "I tell you, the boat slipped off."

"It slipped off infernally quick after we landed, then," cut in the mate. "You were a quarter of a mile down river when we reached the bank."

"I couldn't help it; it slipped," Jim reiterated, as if he could think of no other defence.

"Well, I think you're a liar," bluntly stated the mate, "but I can't prove it, so you'll save your skin this time. But if I ever catch you at any more of your scaly, rattlesnake tricks, you'll go to kingdom come mighty quick, and I'll be the man that'll send you there."

He turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Jim to settle as best he could with the other deck hands, all of whom were now feeling very bitter toward him. A strong party went ashore and found and buried the bodies of the unfortunate men who had been killed there, victims of an attack such as brought death to scores of gallant steamboat men during the years of the Sioux wars.

The following day the Belle Peoria reached Fort Rice, where Colonel Dill and his command were very glad to see them and to hear the first news of General Sully's expedition which they had received in several weeks. The garrison was in good health and spirits; but they had been several times attacked by Indians, and were now much concerned for the safety of a large emigrant train from Minnesota, under Captain James Fisk, which had arrived at the fort in July and moved West over Sully's trail, in spite of warnings, determined to reach the gold mines. This party a little later came very near being annihilated by the Indians on the edge of the Bad Lands; but a strong relief column sent out by General Sully after his return to Fort Rice finally rescued them and brought them back safe.

After leaving Colonel Dill's hospitable command the journey of the steamboat was uneventful for several days, until one morning she came to the bank at Fort La Framboise. She was stopping wholly on Al's account and with beating heart he went ashore, accompanied by Wallace and Captain Lamont. They ascended a gently sloping hill to the small and rather dilapidated trading post, which stood on its summit. Here they found that the factor, a Frenchman, was not yet up, but they soon got him out.

"Un white boy by ze name Tomas Breescoe?" said the factor, when Al had explained their errand. "Oui, je savvy heem. Il est un reg'lair leetle Injin. Py gar, he ride like ze centaur!" His eyes narrowed shrewdly. "Un Yanktonais bring heem here, seex, saven week ago. Sacre! How mooch I pay pour ze pauvre boy release! You pay me back, oui?"

"Certainly," replied Al, yet with many misgivings, for he had no idea what the Frenchman might ask. "You shall be repaid for any expense you may have been put to."

Captain Lamont nudged him. "He's going to gouge you," he whispered. "Don't be too eager. Find out where Tommy is."

"I haven't much money," continued Al, speaking the sober truth. "Is my brother here now?"

"Eet ees not so ver' mooch," proceeded the factor, ignoring Al's question and quickly changing his tack regarding the ransom. "T'ree horse, feefty pound flouair, ten pound shot et ten pound powdair."

Al was aghast, for he understood that these items would cost far more than he had money to pay for. But here Captain Lamont broke into the conversation.

"That's more than Mr. Briscoe or I can pay you for just now," said he, blandly. "However, we can give you a note and pay the amount over to Mr. Charles P. Chouteau for you when we reach St. Louis."

Mr. Chouteau was the manager of the American Fur Company and the factor knew as well as did Captain Lamont that he would not allow one of his employees to practise such extortion upon the relatives or friends of an unfortunate prisoner rescued from the savages. The Frenchman shifted his feet uneasily.

"Has m'sieu feefty dollair, cash?" he asked.

"Fifty dollars?"

"Oui, m'sieu. Pour zat ve call ze mattair—how you say?—sqvare."

The Captain looked at Al and nodded, for the amount was about one-third of what the man's first demand would have made it.

"But I haven't even that much, Captain," said Al, despairingly.

"I have forty dollars, Al," said Wallace. "Take that." He thrust his hand into his pocket.

"Pshaw, that's all right," broke in the Captain, stopping him. "I have plenty, but we don't want to be bled, that's all." He turned to the factor. "Very well," he remarked. "We'll pay you fifty dollars, cash. Now where's the boy?"

"M'sieu has ze cash money here, dans sa poche, for geeve me now?" the factor persisted, anxiously.

"Yes, yes," replied Captain Lamont, impatiently. "But before I give it to you, you must first show us the boy."

The Frenchman waved his hands pathetically.

"Oui, mais je ne peut pas show ze pauvre boy. Il est depart down ze rivair pour la S'in' Louis pour—two veek."

"You say you can't show him?" exclaimed the Captain. "He started for St. Louis two weeks ago?"

"Oui, m'sieu, oui. Sur le steamair North Vind. Je poot heem ver' comfor'ble sur le steamair. He shall reach S'in' Louis safe."

"Huh! That remains to be seen!" grunted the Captain. Then he looked sympathetically into Al's disappointed face. "Well, my boy," said he, "that seems to be all there is to it. Your brother has gone down and you can do nothing but follow. Here is your money, factor. We thank you for your trouble." He handed the Frenchman fifty dollars in greenbacks from an amply filled wallet, for the steamboat officers of those days earned handsome salaries and were seldom without plenty of money.

Then the Captain and his two young companions retraced their steps to the steamboat landing and the Belle Peoria resumed her journey. Al was perfectly certain that the Frenchman had simply robbed them of fifty dollars, for he did not believe that Te-o-kun-ko had either asked or received one cent of ransom for Tommy's delivery. He was, moreover, far from satisfied concerning his young brother's present safety, but he was helpless in the circumstances, and could only hope that Tommy would reach St. Louis all right and would there seek his uncle, Mr. Colton.

Ten days sufficed to bring the Belle Peoria to Omaha, and here her captain received so tempting an offer to carry a cargo back to a point up-river that he determined to accept it. His decision was an unexpected misfortune to Captain Lamont, but the latter was not a man to be discouraged by such untoward events. It will be remembered that on her way up-river, the Island City left a large barge at Omaha which had so impeded her progress that she could not tow it further. This barge was still lying moored to the bank where it had been left, and into it Captain Lamont loaded his engines and other machinery from the Belle Peoria, determined to complete his journey to St. Louis by drifting down-river with the current.

The size of the barge was such that it could easily accommodate the cargo of machinery and still leave ample living room for the entire crew of the shipwrecked Island City. Many men were necessary to handle the unwieldy craft with oars, sweeps, and rudders in facing hard winds, in sparring off from bars or snags, and in encountering the many other perils and embarrassments incident to such navigation. Tarpaulins were spread over the boat, protecting both the machinery and the crew; a galley was arranged and a cook stove set up; a sufficient supply of provisions was laid in for the first few days of the journey; and, thus equipped, the strange craft set out on her southward voyage.

It was a slow journey, but no one could have called it monotonous, for a score of times every day all hands were called out to hard work of one sort or another. Now it was to pole the barge off a shoal place on which she had drifted, or again, to row her down the length of some bend against a flat head wind which was beating her back up the river faster than the current bore her the other way. Occasionally the men had to land and, taking hold of a long "cordelle rope" attached to the barge's stern, walk up the bank in a long, straining line and pull her back into the channel from some "blind chute" into which she had blundered, dragging her along as in the early days of the fur trade the crews of the keel boats were obliged to drag their vessels clear from St. Louis to Fort Union, except when rare favoring winds allowed the use of a sail. More than once during the long days between Omaha and Kansas City, Al and his companions worked for hours up to their waists and shoulders in the water alongside the barge, freeing her from some obstruction or a lodgement against the bank.

But all labors have an end, and at length the great bend at Kansas City came in sight, with the little town straggling along the river and the rugged, precipitous hills rising behind it, which in a few decades were destined to be covered with the crowded dwellings and the towering business structures of a great metropolis. The barge was moored for the night, and most of her crew, including Al and Wallace, seized the opportunity to get a glimpse of civilization once more and to hear the news of the day by strolling up-town in the evening.

"I'll tell you what I want," said Wallace, as they walked along Broadway, looking into the brightly lighted shop windows and enjoying the novel sensation of being on a busy street with crowds of people about them. "I want a great, big, tall, fat glass of lemonade, with ice in it. I haven't had one since I was in St. Paul last."

"Nor I since I left St. Louis," rejoined Al. "That for me, too."

They soon came to an ice-cream and confectionery store where a number of people were sitting about at small tables, eating, drinking, and talking, quite after the manner of dwellers in a real city. The boys took their places in two vacant chairs at a table where two men were seated, one a soldier and the other a civilian. After giving their orders to the waiter, the boys sat silent for a moment, feeling an embarrassing consciousness of their decidedly soiled and unkempt appearance in the comparatively well dressed crowd, which included a number of ladies. Presently the soldier at their table said to his companion, after a silence induced by the intrusion of the boys upon their privacy,

"Well, anyhow, I'll tell you if old Pap Price ever gets as far as the Kansas line with his ragamuffin army, we'll give him a reception that he won't forget soon."

Al and Wallace began to listen, for this sounded interesting.

"You Kansas Militia fellows are too much scattered," returned the civilian. "Why doesn't General Curtis get you concentrated down here by the border somewhere? I tell you, old Pap will be here before you know it. Why, he's already to Jefferson City, according to the latest despatches, cleaning up everything before him and coming this way like a jack rabbit. What is there between here and his front to stop his twenty-five or thirty thousand men? Nothing! Nothing to make him even hesitate."

"There will be something to make him hesitate, though," insisted the Kansas militiaman, stoutly. "Curtis is concentrating, and we'll be sent across the State line to meet and stop Price somewhere around Lexington. You watch!"

"Would you go across the line?" queried the other.

"Certainly I would."

"Well, then, you're an exception," returned the civilian. "I'll bet you two bits that if the Kansas militia is ordered across the State line, nine-tenths of them will refuse to go. They're too afraid they'll be kept away over election and too afraid they'll have to give up a little shred of their sacred 'State Rights' to the National Government."

"Oh, well, some of the boys feel that way, of course," replied the militiaman, defensively, "but not all, by any means."

Al's curiosity had reached the breaking-point.

"I beg your pardon," he interrupted, leaning across the table, "but will you kindly tell me if General Sterling Price's army is invading Missouri?"

The two men looked at Al and Wallace in amazement.

"Why, yes, I should say it is," answered the militiaman. "Where have you come from that you didn't know that?"

"We have just come down the Missouri in a barge," Al answered, "and we haven't heard any late news; nothing since we left Omaha. We have been up in Dakota all Summer with General Sully, fighting the Sioux Indians."

"Oh, is that so?" asked the other. "We haven't heard much from that campaign, either. Did you whip the Indians?"

"Yes, we defeated and scattered them in two pretty big battles. But what about General Price?"

"Why, he entered southeast Missouri from Arkansas about the middle of September with an army of anywhere from fifteen to thirty thousand men. He tried to take Pilot Knob, but General Ewing, who used to be here at Kansas City, you know, was there with a small force and repulsed him badly; knocked the tar clean out of him, in fact. Then he started for St. Louis but there were so many troops there that he seems to have given it up; at least, he is moving west along the Missouri and I guess he's somewhere around Jeff City now. I don't know whether he can take it or not; according to the latest despatches Rosecrans is going to try to hold the city. But we're looking for Price to come on out here and try to invade Kansas, anyhow."

"You say he's coming up the Missouri?" asked Al. "We've got to keep on down the river to St. Louis with our barge."

"Well, you'd better look out for old Pap, then," rejoined the other. "He'll catch you, sure, and likely burn your boat; and if he don't the guerillas will. They're awful bad now, and there isn't a steamboat ever gets through without being attacked, and often they're destroyed."

Al felt a sudden chill of apprehension.

"Do you know whether they attacked the steamer North Wind on her way down?" he asked, anxiously.

"No, I don't remember it," the militiaman returned.

"Why, yes, you do," broke in his companion. "Don't you know, two or three weeks ago a band of guerillas got the North Wind somewhere between Lexington and Miami? They crossed the river on her and then burnt her up. It was reported several of her people were killed in the mix-up."

"Oh, that's right; I had forgotten," returned the soldier. Then to Al he said, curiously, "Why do you ask?"

"Nothing," answered Al, in a dull voice. "Only I had a young brother on her who had been a prisoner among the Indians. He was going home to his mother in St. Louis."

"Pshaw, that's too bad!" exclaimed the militiaman, sympathetically. "But he's probably gotten through all right."

"Maybe he has and maybe not," said Al. "It's hard to tell in such times. Come on, Wallace," he added. "Let's go back to the boat."

They rose abruptly and left the store. Al slept very little that night, and when he did his rest was broken by troubled dreams of Tommy; he imagined his brother in all sorts of desperate situations and losing his life in a variety of horrible ways. Even when awake and thinking rationally, he realized that almost any of the fancies of his nightmare might easily be realities, for the guerilla warfare in Missouri at this time had degenerated into a carnival of barbarous brutality hardly exceeded in the history of any country, and the mercy or cruelty dealt out to a prisoner by one of these bands of lawless marauders depended almost wholly upon the humor of the guerilla chief.